


Little Things

by type40consultingdetective (type_40_consulting_detective), type_40_consulting_detective



Series: Songs About Jane [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Female John Watson, Friends With Benefits, Pining Sherlock, Pre-Reichenbach, Sherlock Holmes/Female John Watson, Song Inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:13:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4431308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/type_40_consulting_detective/pseuds/type40consultingdetective, https://archiveofourown.org/users/type_40_consulting_detective/pseuds/type_40_consulting_detective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She murmurs, scolding me even in her sleep, and for a moment I think she’s woken and found me soft with sentiment. She’d take the piss out of me for a week, reminding me that this was supposed to be casual, no strings sex. She doesn’t feel that either, she’s bound as tight as I am, but it makes her feel better to pretend, I suppose. I don’t open doors for her, bring her flowers, or tell her I adore her, and she doesn’t have to believe I would ever want to do that for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Things

She’s finally sleeping, and all I can can do it curl around her and watch her breath raising her chest, watch her pale lashes flutter and her soft lips part slightly in relaxation. Every moment I’m saving now, like a dying man. In every real way, I might be. Weeks at the most, and she’ll be out of my reach, and I’ll be out of her life. Not forever, I hope, please not forever. I’ll come home to her, and she’ll shout at me, and I’ll spend some time deserving her again. If she lets me. She will let me, she has to. She’ll understand I’m protecting her, she understands the threat and the madness of war. This is war in so many ways, and I won’t bear any casualties.

Soft and warm in her peaceful rest, Jane doesn’t even flinch as I trace the freckles on her shoulder that form the little dipper. All the patterns of stars and the movement of the planes are tucked into a room in her wing of my mind, a door that leads to a grassy hill and an endless, inky black night sky full of diamonds. Here, there is the hill at night, I’ll lay with her and count the stars and trace them out, tell her the stories of each shape. Maybe after, I’ll find us a real grassy hill, a real ink black sky, and I’ll curl her to me and kiss her under the stars.

She’s so deep in slumber in now, making little snoring sounds she’ll deny even exist. She’s small and sweet, and no one on earth but me could see the steel of her under the soft jumpers and fitted jeans. She wore camouflage in the desert and she came home to the same instinct but a different environment; soft cashmere in light blue cover the strong arms that could take out men twice her size, relaxed fit jeans hide the swell of her hips that she despises, that same swell that I’ve just finished worshiping with bite marks and fingertip bruises. Every motion of her hides the woman I know, the one I have quite senselessly come to love, my Jane.

She murmurs, scolding me even in her sleep, and for a moment I think she’s woken and found me soft with sentiment. She’d take the piss out of me for a week, reminding me that this was supposed to be casual, no strings sex. She doesn’t feel that either, she’s bound as tight as I am, but it makes her feel better to pretend, I suppose. I don’t open doors for her, bring her flowers, or tell her I adore her, and she doesn’t have to believe I would ever want to do that for her. My camouflage, it seems, is better, or maybe I just see her better than she does me..

My text alert goes off, and I know what I’ll find written. Mycroft has taken to scolding me if I’m in Jane’s room too long, as if he can see me kissing her hair and drawing patterns on her skin and letting all my walls collapse when she can’t see it. He means well, Jane’s voice says in my mind, though Jane is never so charitable to my brother. He only wants you safe, like I do. I have no arguments to offer any more, Jane in my head has heard them all.

It’s morning light before I realize it, and she’s stirring next to me, her internal alarm clock still set from her army days. I should have been gone already, should have left before she found me here with gentle eyes and hands. I don’t leave now, though, I feign sleep and hope I can play pretend a little longer with her.  
  
“I can’t move, and you’re not asleep, you git.”

 _Git._  I’ll never hear the word again without hearing her affection, without picturing the little half grin she gives me when I’m being a smart arse and she can’t help but laugh at it.

“I was asleep until you started snoring,” I tease, and she elbows my ribs, freeing herself easily.

“It’s too early for lying, Sherlock,” she grumbles and gropes off the side of the bed for her dressing gown, which is actually across the room over the lamp. I don’t tell her, it’s a pleasure in itself to listen to her grumble and swear, only to give me a silent, dirty look when she spots it where I tossed it last night. She’s so self conscious in the daylight, wrapping in the bed sheet, snatching up her gown and nightie, and making her way to the loo.

Someone has informed Mycroft that life has started up at Baker because he sends another three texts I ignore and a phone call I send to voicemail. He won’t dare scold me there, as Jane is usually the one checking it. I can avoid his little talk for another day or so, two if i’m lucky.

I get a pillow to the head as I’m deep in thought, and Jane is scowling at me like I missed half a conversation. I did, but it’s hardly my fault she talks when she can see my hands are steepled under my chin. 

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” I roll gracelessly out of her bed, still bare, and she chucks my pants at me, followed by my own dressing gown. Both are clean, she must have taken the dirty down to the wash basket and brought me fresh.

“Someone is still in my bed, Sherlock. Why do we even bother with rules?”  
  
“Yes, why do we bother?”

”Not funny, Sherlock. We agreed.” She’s straining, almost begging under her calm demeanor. I’m pressing at the edges of our truce, and it’s too much. I’m half tempted to fight it out, to renegotiate, but the pair of us are on borrowed time.

“Fine.” I dress without comment, and the stiff set of her shoulders loosens. She leads the way down the stairs, starting up the kettle and slipping into the friendly, domestic role we are supposed to take on in the flat, anywhere except her bedroom. The rules make a sick sort of sense, keeping it secret and buried. The rest of the world can’t touch what we have. It would be comforting if it wasn’t so restrictive.

“Tea, then back to bed.” Jane sets toast and tea in front of me, and I’ve zoned a good chunk of time again, enough for boiling and brewing and adding of milk and sugar. I wonder if she watches me when I do this, when my mind escapes to wander the halls.

“Oh really, Captain?” I smirk, arching a suggestive eyebrow. Two days in a row is also against the damned rules, but I can pretend she is seducing me, rather than scolding me. It’s infinitely more amusing.

“For you. You’re zoning out on me.” Her fingers brush my curls off of my forehead while her right hand grips my chin and takes in the state of my face. I haven’t seen a mirror yet today, but I can deduce the state by her reactions. “You didn’t sleep a wink, did you? You need to sleep while I’m out, understood?”

“So I’m sent there alone as punishment?” Her shoulders are squared and stern, and I can read my petulance in her tight, worried eyes. I need to reign myself in, give her less reasons to fret.

“Some of us have to work on Mondays.” She finally replies, after having a few sips of tea to parse out the right words.

“Mondays are boring.” I push away the last of my toast, finish my sip of tea, and storm to the couch. I let Jane think her expressions go unseen as I flop down, head on the arm and eyes shut tight.

“Mondays are rubbish, not boring.” Jane ruffles my hair like a mother as she passes me to dress for her awful job, her normal and boring work that keeps her from adventures with me. It’s her camouflage again, playing at sane and normal.

“Mondays are rubbish too” _Call in and come back to bed._  I add in my head, lips resolutely shut tight to hold back the words that would slip out so easily.

“Sherlock…” The pleading tone again, and she waits at the door, hand on the knob but frozen. “Sarah needs me to come in.”

“Fine. Thai tonight.”

“Only if you’re eating.”

“Yes, Mummy.” I can hear her chuckling as she goes up the stairs to dress. That’s what I need, that smile, that laugh, her joy. I store away what I can, and then delve into my problem. _The final problem_ , he called it, and I worry that it actually might be.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Little Things, written by Ed Sheeran and recorded by One Direction. I prefer Ed’s version, a live version [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbfALwwSdpU).
> 
> Part one of the Songs About Jane series of short fics.


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